Guest editorial: Obamacare delay not a failure

When the Obama administration announced last week that it was delaying an all-important health-care reform that penalizes employers who do not offer insurance coverage to their workers, defenders of the broken status quo responded with predictable and misplaced glee; the rest of us might wonder when laggard employers will start pulling their own weight.

On July 2, the White House announced a one-year delay in the Affordable Care Act provision requiring large employers to offer employees coverage or pay a fine. The delay is ostensibly to allow the slow movers more time to adjust to the brave new world of shared responsibility and even consider how they might comply with the employer mandate.

Nonetheless, the response from Congressional Republicans and others who oppose "Obamacare" was gloating and predictable; they said the change evinced bigger worries that the law is a failure, a train wreck in the making. "This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable, and it underscores the need to repeal the law and replace it with effective, patient-centered reforms," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Actually, what the delay evinces is the administration's willingness to placate business's plodding acceptance of change. Indeed, many employers - let's call them the reform deniers - banked on two predictions that proved to be short-sighted and plain wrong: The 2010 law would be struck down by the courts or, failing that, would be repealed. With neither in the offing, many are scrambling to adjust to the resulting "uncertainty."

Notwithstanding the complaints, the enforcement delay - until 2015 - directly affects only a small percentage of employers. The ACA already excluded employers with fewer than 50 full-time workers. About 96 percent of U.S. companies employ fewer than that number - about 34 million workers employed in some 5.8 million of 6 million firms. And of those that employ more than 50 people, 96 percent already provide coverage.

A host of worthy ACA reforms have already take effect, including changes that have extended coverage to millions of young people who were doing without. Moreover, the ACA's important individual mandate - a requirement that individual's purchase insurance - is still moving forward

The employer's reprieve "just temporarily delays the shared responsibility" of the law, Brian Poger, CEO of Benefitter, a software company that is working with employers to implement the changes, told USA Today. But that certainly doesn't mean the effort is doomed; it will just take that much longer for the interdependent reforms to take full shape - with an eye toward erecting a smarter, more comprehensive health-care system for the benefit of more Americans. This remains the worthy aim of Obamacare; nothing should alter that score.

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Guest editorial: Obamacare delay not a failure

When the Obama administration announced last week that it was delaying an all-important health-care reform that penalizes employers who do not offer insurance coverage to their workers, defenders of

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